I'm looking for some general "calendar" help to use for our security
release scheduling process. Something that usefully accounts for
clients all over the world.
By "usefully accounts" I mean that we want to be able to have reasonable
confidence that we're not going to pick a public release date that is a
national holiday for one country, and we're also not going to avoid a
date because it's "let's order pizza" day somewhere else, but the
purpose of the holiday is obscured because of language translation issues.
I figure this is something others must have solved, and I'm hoping some
folks on this list might be able to offer me some pointers.
The general principle is look out for the major network lock downs. Some times that is overlap with holidays. Other times it is over financial close months.
My personal $.02 is to avoid major vulnerability disclosures in December, during Lunar New Year weeks, during Ramadan, and June. Some would also include August (Euro holidays).
But these days there are timers given by the vulnerability finder (or CERT Team) and conference disclosures (security rock stars) that drive the disclosure to a time which is not optimal to the people who have to roll out the remediation.
In essence, write a disclose policy, put it on your website, and be open for improvements based on input from your constituents. Do your best. That is all your can do.
Barry
PS - Let me know if you need help writing the disclosure policy.